Monday rave: why I love being a teacher

• I like that it's never, ever boring - and as someone who gets bored easily - that's a real bonus. It's never the same from one day to another. Or from one year to another.

• I like the energy, creativity, ideas, and  humour of the colleagues I work with.

• I like the energy, creativity, ideas and humour that I get from the students in my classroom.

•  I like that I get to (justifiably) spend money on books and movies.

•  I like it when a student or a group takes an idea and runs with it. I'm a big fan of veering off at tangents.

•  I love it when kids are racing each other to get in the door so that they can be the first to see what the "Word of the Day" is - and I really love it when so many of those words turn up in their writing.

• I love sitting on the stage at Prizegiving - with a number of tissues at the ready - and seeing the fine young people who are finishing their secondary school career.

• I love that I get paid to be passionate about books and poems and song lyrics and films and words.

• It's fantastic when a student gets so involved in something that they are really angry or upset - like when Othello is sooo blind to Iago's evil, or when Piggy dies....

• I like that I sometimes enter my classroom in the morning feeling grumpy for some reason - I'm tired, or it's raining, or some political skirmish has broken out in the staffroom - and realise 20 minutes later that I'm feeling great!

• I love it when a student points out something that I hadn't thought of.

• I love those Christmas cards which tell you how much they have come to love English.

• and I especially love being a teacher when it's the first day of the summer holidays!